Monday, 5 March 2018

On the evening of March 04, 2018, the University
of Battambang (UBB) has organized an
Orientation Workshop on Hong Kong PhD Fellowship Scheme (HKPFS) to
study in the Education University of Hong Kong (EdUHK), China.
This fellowship is funded by Research Grants Council (RGC) of Hong Kong
since 2009. Prof. Lo Sing Kai, who is Associate Vice President and
Dean of Graduate School of EUHK, together with two other delegates, Ms. Poon Sin Yi Teresa,
who is Assistant Registrar and Head of Administration and Ms. Wang Yifei who,
is Special Project Manager of Graduate School have presented the detailed
information of the fellowship and how to prepare an impressive application to
succeed in this prestigious fellowship. Consistent with the One Belt One Road
Policy announced by the Chinese Government, the Education University of Hong Kong
(EdUHK) is
keen to get PhD students from Cambodia, particular in the UBB. On be
haft of H.E. SiengEmtotim, Rector of UBB,
lecturers and students, Dr. Sam Rany, Vice-Rector of UBB has
express his profound thanks to the delegates who contributed their valued times
and resources to motivate UBB’s staff and students to apply for this
fellowship, and he strongly hoped that UBB’s lecturers and students will have a
chance to get this PhD fellowship under their facilitation and cooperation.

Thursday, 4 January 2018

Photo: March 6th - 10th, EURASHE (European Association of Institutions in Higher Education) and project coordinator co-organised meeting of twelve leading representatives from TACTIC partner universities from Cambodia, Vietnam and Mongolia. The Rectors’ Meeting took place in Brussels, Belgium in the EURASHE headquarters.

“UBB Delegates attended the TACTIC Rectors’ Meeting in Brussels” Responding to the official invitation from the European Association of Institution in Higher Education (EURASHE) under TACTIC Erasmus+ project, two UBB delegates, H.E. Sieng Emtotim, Rector of UBB and Dr. Sam Rany, Director of Institute of Foreign Languages have attended the Rectors’ Meeting at Brussels, Belgium on March 6-10, 2017. This meeting aims at providing educational leadership training for top leaders from six Asian Universities in Cambodia, Vietnam, and Mongolia, and strengthens the international cooperation among these countries. UBB delegate acquired new knowledge related the roles of stakeholder in development of European Higher Education Institutions including European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA), European Students Union (ESU), European University Association (EUA), and EURASHE. Furthermore, they learned how to apply for some academic and research projects funded by European Commission and agencies. The last day, our delegate has visited the Odisee University in Brussels.

The 3 days intensive program started by the TACTIC presentation by the coordinator of the project Violeta Osouchova from Masaryk University, Brno. Thereafter the presentations of each of the partner institutions followed with emphasis on the expectations from TACTIC project. After the lunch break, EURASHE Project Manager Marko Grdosic and Policy and Communications Officer Alexandre Wipf led the evaluating discussion about strengths and weaknesses of the partner universities, followed by two European Commission representatives Manel Laporta Grau and Antonella Giorgio who covered equally important aspect of the cooperation - the role and significance of European Union in supporting the capacity building in higher education outside European Union.

Second part of the program included presentations on importance of European associations for representing the interests of higher education institutions and role of stakeholders in development of higher education in Europe. Speeches were given by Michal Karpisek, EURASHE Secretary General, Paula Ranne (ENQA, European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education) and Anna Widegren (ESU, European Students Union).

On the last day of the program the participants visited ODISEE University College in Brussels. The day followed by presentation on management of higher education institutions in Belgium by Johan Cloet, former EURASHE Secretary General, former General Director of Lessius University College/Vice-General Director of Thomas More University College in Antwerp, Belgium. After that, with reflections of the participants the Rectors’ Meeting was officially closed. We are looking forward to the meeting of all partners in Hanoi, Vietnam, in December 2017.

Wednesday, 3 January 2018

A Colonial University for South-East Asia? The Indochinese University in Hanoi (1906-1945)
By Sara Legrandjacques

(Sourse: Kyotoreview.org): The article is available at: https://kyotoreview.org/yav/indochinese-colonial-university-for-south-east-asia/

In 2006, Hanoi University celebrated its 100th birthday. In his celebratory speech, the University Rector, Prof. Dao Trong Thi, emphasized the importance of the institution’s history. Referring to its colonial birth, he highlighted almost a century of Vietnamese higher education.

Created by the French twice, in 1906 and 1917, the Indochinese University particularly developed in the interwar period after its rocky start. It remained open during WWII before its appropriation by the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in 1945. It might be suspected that this post-colonial era would have reduced its zone of influence; but from the start, Hanoi University always had striven to be a regional academic hub, especially in South-East Asia.

“A set of higher classes for students from the colony and neighbouring lands is established, in Indochina, under the name “Indochinese University”. This institution aims to expand in the Far-East, especially through the use of French language, European scientific knowledge and methods.” 1

Since 1902, Chinese students had started to enrol in Indochinese higher schools, mainly Hanoi School of Medicine.The university tried to enlarge this Asian recruitment in order to increase the French influence in the area through the propagation ofFrench knowledge. At that time, Japanese higher schools, renovated in the 1880s, were attracting increasing numbers of students. The British were also creating new institutions in Hong Kong and Singapore. A French institution was seen as a way to compete with them and to prevent local students leaving the colony. As early as 1906, Paul Beau sent letters to French diplomatic representatives in China, Siam, the Philippines, Indonesia and a few more distant lands including Japan and India as an effort to attract potential students. But this regional advertising was hardly efficient: South-East Asian students stayed away from Hanoi and the first – and only – year group was comprised solely of Vietnamese, mostly from the Tonkin region of northern Vietnam. This project suddenly floundered: having opened in 1907, the Indochinese University was closed in 1908 because of financial issues.

This first failure did not prevent some Asian students from heading to Indochina: Chinese students from the borderlands, especially Yunnan, continued seeking out the school of medicine in the years that followed. They generally frequented Franco-Annamite or Franco-Indigenous schools in China. Furthermore, some of them were resuming their studies. Lieou Han Kouang from Kai-Houa (Yunnan), quit a military career to head to Hanoi to study medicine. This non-commissioned officer had learnt French in Shanghai and Mongtseu. After having his so-called “worthiness” checked, and thanks to support from Hanoi School of Medicine’s French director, Dr Cognacq, he left China on February 2, 1918 and enrolled in the school. 2 The Hanoi University would reopen in 1917-1918 for the second time. However, French authorities were becoming increasingly suspicious of cross-border nationalism so some new rules were dedicated to this specific audience. Students were admitted for precise purposes, like helping and assisting French medical doctors in their country of origin.

Did the reopening of Hanoi University in 1917-1918 give a new momentum to this regional influence? It seems difficult to say. The renewed institution was comprised of five schools: medicine, public works, administration, teaching, and agriculture-forestry. Despite students from Southern China being attracted to Hanoi particularly by medical studies, this assessment must be put into perspective: most of the Chinese, according to the French historian Daniel Hémery, would rather chose France, 3 or other Asian, European or American countries, instead of Indochina. The Indochinese University’s audience remained local, all the more so as no mention of a regional purpose was included as part of Governor General Albert Sarraut’s plan in 1917:

“I’ve established a Board for Higher Education whose mission is to prepare the creation, organize the system and formulate the curriculum of higher schools that will be opened in Indochina to French and Native students and will be gathered to constitute the Indochinese University.” 4

When the Business School (1920), the School of Applied Sciences (1922), the School of Fine Arts (1924), the School of Veterinary Training (1928) and finally, a Law School (1931) opened, this local trend still remained. By 1929, 511 students frequented the university. About half of them came from Tonkin, the northern province of Indochina where Hanoi is located. Around one-quarter were from the South, Cochinchina, and between 10 percent and 15 percent were from Annam (central Vietnam). In a nutshell, the Indochinese University was above all else a Vietnamese University. It was neglected by the Cambodians and the Laotians, even though their lands were parts of French Indochina. As Buddhist education was preserved by the colonizers, they were taught in pagoda schools, inside or outside the colony, in Siam for instance.

This trend would become noticeable in the later colonial period, when in 1939-1940, 732 students were studying at Hanoi university (table 1).

Sunday, 24 December 2017

Dr. Sam Rany
was born in March 11, 1982 at Kampot province, Cambodia; he is currently a Vice-
Rector of the University of Battambang (UBB), where is a public university
in northwestern part of Cambodia. He is responsible for the International
Relations (IR) Office, Internal Quality Assurance (IQA) Office, Postgraduate
School, Personnel Office, Research and
Development Center, and UBB’s Projects from May 24, 2017. Dr. Rany is a former
Director of Institute of Foreign Languages of UBB from September 2008 to May
2017.

He earned his PhD in Higher Education Administration from the
School of Educational Studies, University of Science Malaysia (USM) in 2016. He
obtained a Certificate of General Administration from the Royal School
of Administration, Cambodia in May 2017, and he received an E-Teacher
Certificateof English for Specific Purposes (ESP) from the Oregon
University, USA sponsored by U.S. Embassy to Cambodia in 2010. He graduated
with a Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees in Law (LL.B & LL.M),
specialized in International Business Law and Corporate Counsels from the Royal
University of Law and Economics (RULE), Cambodia in 2004 and 2007 respectively.
His doctoral thesis entitled “The Influence of Institutional Integration
Factors towards Students’ Intellectual Development: A Case Study of three Cambodian
Public Universities”.

He is also a lecturer at UBB since 2008; he
has worked closely with US Embassy in term of educational cooperation since
2009. He has to host three US English Follows, Mrs. Connie Leonard, Dr.
Virginia Simmons, and Mr. Adam Aultowski who had sent by US Embassy
to work at the University of Battambang. He has successfully completed a two
years project with 25 disadvantaged students funded by US Embassy; namely, English
Access Micro-scholarship Program from 2015 to 2017 at UBB. He also actively
involved with some projects including Erasmus, KOICA, JICA, USAID, and WB. His
areas of interests included English for Specific Purposes (ESP), Legal Studies,
Public Policy and Administration, Cambodian Educational History, Higher
Education leadership and Administration, Educational Assessment, and other
Social Science Research.

Wednesday, 9 November 2016

Japan (5-6 November 2016): It was my great pleasure and privilege to attend the homestay program organized by the JICE in Osaki City and Miyagi Prefecture. I and two other colleagues, Mr. Sun Sokhet and Va Vannak, from the Royal School of Administration had stayed with a Japanese family, Mr. Aoki Akira and Mrs. Aoki. Mr. Akira is retired high school teacher and a member of BoD of the Non Profit Organization (NPO) in Osaki.

During our staying with their family, we have learned a lot about Japanese cultures, living styles, and other routine activities. The most remembered activities are playing with autism children, walking around the village, farming some vegetables, and practicing mediation (concentration). Our sincere thanks go to their family who accepted us to stay in their house and treated us very well.

Monday, 7 November 2016

Japan (November 17, 2016): Twenty five participants from the Royal School of Administration had attended the Japan-East Asia Network of Exchange for Students and Youths(JENESYS 2016) that had been organized by the Japan International Cooperation Center (JICE) on the Theme of Politics from November 1, 2016 to November, 2016. This program aims at providing a good cooperation and understanding of Japanese culture and society in order to strengthen the spirits of solidarity with Asia through youth exchange activities.

Out of 550 students in the Royal School of Administration, I was selected to attend this crucial program among other 24 participants in Japan. I have obtained new knowledge and experiences of Japanese culture, public administration, national infrastructure, modernization, and people. I have attended one lecture on "National Public Employees in Japan" offered by Associate Professor Watanabe Yasuyuki, from the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS), Japan. I have learned a lot from his perspectives and experiences how to reform the civil services in the country. Also, he mainly focused on the professional code ethics of the civil servants or national public employees and other regulations. Japan is a good model country in term of transparency and accountability. I also visited the National Diet of Japan (the House of Councillors), and Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affair.

The most interestingly, I have visited the the region of MINAMI SANRIKU where was destroyed by Sunami on March 11, 2011. The counselor has shared experiences how to manage the national disasters and restore this region.

Moreover, I had experienced two days of home-stay program with a Japanese family in Osaki City. I have learned Onseb Somuries at the Sebsyokan Hotel.

Taking in this blogger, I would like to express my profound thanks to the JICE and Japanese government that provided me golden opportunities to explore Japanese culture, politics, and people.

Sunday, 26 October 2014

A new plan to lure foreign students with generous scholarships by
China’s eastern Jiangsu province, host to a number of foreign branch
campuses, has sparked anger in the province over resources being
directed towards “wealthy foreigners” while Chinese students struggle
with a rising fee burden.

Resentment has also grown as foreign students are provided with what is
seen as far superior accommodation to that available for local students.

In mid-August, the province’s education bureau launched a ‘Study in
Jiangsu’ programme to develop the province into a major destination for
foreign students. Under the programme, annual scholarships of 50,000 to
90,000 yuan (US$8,200 to US$14,700) will be made available to applicants
from overseas wanting to study at universities, including joint
overseas ventures such as Duke Kunshan University and Xi’an
Jiaotong-Liverpool University.

Another 50 publicly funded universities in Jiangsu, many in the popular
student cities of Nanjing and Suzhou are permitted to take foreign
students.

Yang Shubing, director of publicity at the Jiangsu education bureau said
the province had some 18,700 foreign students by the end of last year.
“To encourage more such students, the provincial scholarship total has
reached 15 million yuan each year,” he was quoted in official media as
saying.

But the plan has sparked outrage, with local residents criticising the
scheme on China’s microblog site Weibo, in particular because it was
announced at a time when universities in at least nine Chinese provinces
were introducing steep tuition fees rises for local students this year.

In some cases fee rises
for locals will be as much as 50% compared to last year or even 75%,
as was reported for Ningxia Autonomous Region – a poorer region in
western China.

Scholarships and grants for local students have not risen in line with
these sharp increases, angering students and families, the Shanghai Daily newspaper reported in August.

Fees burden

University tuition fees for local students remained at around 5,000 yuan
(US$817) a year since 2006, when the government imposed a five-year
moratorium on raising university fees.

Education commentator Bing Qi said 5,000 yuan today was around 18% of
urban residents' per capita disposable income and 56% of rural
residents’.

“Therefore, tuition fees should be reduced, not increased,” Bing said, adding in a commentary in Beijing Youth Daily that “the burden on households remains high despite rising incomes in recent years”.

Official figures show that in 2013, the overall value of scholarships
totalled 57.41 billion yuan (US$9.38 billion) for 2.65 million Chinese
students – or around 1500 yuan (US$245) per student.

“Contrast this figure with the sum Jiangsu is prepared to grant foreign
students and it does appear that the concern about ‘discrimination’ or
‘double standards’ is not entirely misplaced,” Shanghai Daily commented.

Jiangsu’s “quest for a leading position in the global education
landscape was justified only if it did not come at a cost to locals”,
the paper added.

Citizens vented their anger online saying if the government had money
for education scholarships it should not be spent on ‘foreign elites’
when many students in poor rural areas were unable to afford fees.

Boosting foreign student numbers

Jiangsu is not alone, however: Shanghai is aiming to attract 70,000
foreign students by 2015, up from 40,000 this year and will increase the
number of scholarships for those on longer degree programmes.

Some will be worth 200,000 yuan or US$32,700 over four years of study,
including accommodation costs – a huge sum compared to loans and grants
for local students, even when taking account of the higher accommodation
costs for foreigners.

The Beijing government is actively trying to attract more foreign
students and has said it will provide scholarships for as many as 50,000
international students by 2015. Some 18,000 scholarships have been made
available for students from Africa since 2013.

Although the majority of foreign students in China are currently from
the US and South Korea, Liu Jinghui, secretary-general of the China
Scholarship Council, has said Chinese higher education would be promoted
more strongly in Europe. Liu said he hoped to increase the 1,087
scholarships provided to European students last year.

As the barrage of online criticism against funds being “diverted” to
foreign students rose, the China Development Bank last month announced
14 billion yuan of “new loans” for local students this year through the
state loan scheme that benefits some 2.5 million students.

The bank said the cap on the loan amount would be increased by 33% to
8,000 yuan (US$1,300), up from 6,000 yuan previously for each
undergraduate applicant. Graduate students will receive up to 12,000
yuan.

The increase of 2,000 yuan per undergraduate student is the first such
increase since 2002, with official inflation running at an annual rate
of 5 to 6% in recent years. Students in some provinces, including
Hainan, held protests last year about the rise in fees and other costs,
including canteen food.

"The previous [loan] standard was implemented for more than a dozen
years, and many students with financial difficulties said it was far
from enough," said Zhang Guangming, director of the China National
Centre for Student Financial Aid under the Education Ministry.

Students in French universities pay among the lowest fees in Europe. But
although education ministers claim that, despite austerity, funding for
student benefits has kept up with purchasing power, student
organisations say the cost of starting the new academic year for
students is up to 2% higher than last year.

The government has not gone down the route of charging students high
sums for university studies, and fixes the modest rates by decree. For
the 2014-15 academic year, enrolment fees have increased by 0.7%, to
€184 (US$236) annually for a three-year licence (bachelor equivalent) course, €256 for a masters, €391 for a doctorate and €610 for an engineering diploma.

But while students do not have to worry about high fees, they need money to live on during the university year. In its inquiry La Vie Étudiante: Repères, the Observatoire de la Vie Étudiante, or OVE, identified the main sources of student income.

The most common was family support, accounting for 30% of student
resources and paying an average of €308 a month. This was followed
closely by wages from paid work, at 29%, providing €618 on average; then
public benefits such as those from the government and from local and
regional authorities, representing 25%, and an average of €307 monthly.

Other sources, each representing 6% or less of student income, included
contributions from a spouse or partner, savings, and, at a bare 1%,
student loans, which are available from some banks under government
guarantee.

Nearly one in two students did paid work during the university year,
according to OVE, which found that 20% who had a job considered it had a
‘negative impact’ on their studies. More than half considered their
employment essential for survival.

OVE reported that a third of the students lived with one or both
parents, a third in rented accommodation either alone or in a couple
with or without children, and 12% were in private rentals shared with
others. Only 11% lived in subsidised university housing. Rents averaged
€426 across the country, and were highest in Paris at €597.

The 2015 budget allocated €2.5 billion (US$3.2 billion) for ‘student life’, an increase of €42 million, or 1.7%, over last year.

In September, marking the start of the university year,
the Minister for Education, Higher Education and Research, Najat
Vallaud-Belkacem, and State Secretary for Higher Education and Research,
Geneviève Fioraso, stressed their first priority was to ensure academic
success for the greatest number of students, with more help for those
from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Among measures they announced were increased grants for more students,
continuation of an intensive student housing construction plan and
government rental guarantees for those looking for accommodation in the
private sector.

However, the government has this year discontinued merit grants,
previously awarded to about 7,000 new students each year for three
years, in favour of increasing grants paid according to social criteria.

In spite of more generous benefits, students and their families face
stiff cost-of-living increases at the start of this academic year,
according to the Fédération des Associations Générales Étudiantes, or FAGE, and the Union Nationale des Étudiants de France, or UNEF.

FAGE calculated a student had to spend an average of €2,525 to start the
university year, 1.5% more than last year while UNEF reckoned the
increase was 2%, “four times the rate of inflation for the past year”.
The main causes were higher rents, and increases in unavoidable expenses
such as enrolment fees, university meals and social security payments.

While previous reforms had improved the purchasing power of 160,000
students by cutting their study costs by 7.4%, the remainder faced
substantial increases of 5.5% for those on grants, and 3.6% for the
others, claimed UNEF.

The union said grants reform was “still far from the promise of a
student autonomy allowance” made by François Hollande during his
presidential campaign, and it urged further benefit increases and
widened access for more students.

FAGE asserted that 28% of students had to take paid work to get by, and
that there was a 50% risk of academic failure for those who worked more
than 12 hours a week. It called for the government to open urgently a
“comprehensive and ambitious plan for students’ living conditions”.

Rising university fees for international students are casting a cloud
over Singapore’s future as an Asian regional hub for international
students – particularly from the rest of Asia. This is despite many
parents in the region believing that paying for education is a good
investment.

A report by the HSBC Bank The Value of Education
found that families in Asia were willing to pay high fees, but recent
developments in the city state have shown that tolerance levels for high
fees are being reached.

Singapore is now one of the most expensive countries globally to obtain
an undergraduate degree once the high cost of living in the city state
is taken into account. Foreign student numbers have fallen as fees have
been rising – and at a much faster rate than those for locals.

At Singapore’s top-ranked public universities, undergraduate fees for
foreign students are around S$15,300 (US$12,000) for humanities and
social science degrees, an increase over last year of more than 11%,
compared with an 8.6% increase for Singaporeans.

The cost of a business degree or management degree has risen in the past
year by as much as 15% for foreign students – to S$31,200 (US$24,500),
compared with a 6% increase for Singaporeans that allows them to obtain
the same degree for S$9,250 (US$7,200).

Fees for undergraduate law degrees have risen by an eye-watering 17% in
the past year compared with 8% for Singaporeans, according to official
figures. The fees rise coupled with high living costs has been
exacerbated by a strengthening of the Singaporean currency, HSBC notes.

With undergraduate tuition fees and living costs per year combined,
Singapore is second only to Australia in terms of cost among 15 major
higher education destinations for foreign students.

HSBC puts Singapore at US$39,229 a year compared with US$42,000 in
Australia. Comparable amounts for the US and UK are US$36,500 and
US$35,000 respectively.

Drop in numbers

Despite higher fee rises for foreign students and the indication that
their enrolments had dropped, Singapore’s Education Minister Heng Swee
Keat noted that the amount collected in tuition fees from international
students had barely increased between 2012 and 2013.

In 2013, the amount was S$176 million (US$138 million) compared with
S$172 million (US$135 million) in 2012 – after jumping significantly
from S$158 million (US$124 million) in 2011.

Immigration authority figures show that some 75,000 foreign student pass
holders were issued in July, compared with 84,000 two years ago. The
number will be even lower for university students as these figures
include those attending secondary schools in Singapore.

Singapore had set itself the headline target of attracting 150,000 foreign university students by 2015 compared with about 30,000 a decade ago. But it is now clear it will fall well short of its ambitions.

The education ministry announced a drop from 18% to 15% in the proportion of places for foreign students overall in Singapore.
Nonetheless, in some institutions such as the National University of
Singapore, the proportion of foreign students at around 35% of the
intake, has not changed since 2011.

The Economic Development Board, which has been promoting Singapore as a
hub, declined to comment on whether the 2015 target of attracting
150,000 foreign students had been abandoned.

Jobs situation

Foreign students hoping to stay on after graduation also say that
finding a job in Singapore has become more difficult, making it harder
to justify the increased costs. Singapore has offered generous
scholarships to foreign students but public funding of such scholarships
has recently been questioned.

The government revealed earlier this year that foreign graduates who
receive Singapore government scholarships and are bound to work in the
city on graduation, were taking longer to find jobs. This had led to
‘repayment holidays’ that weigh on the public purse.

The climate has changed in the past two years and now there is rising
local hostility towards immigration as jobs have become harder to find,
in part due to slowing economic growth. According to official figures,
overall graduate unemployment rose from 3.3% to 3.6% in the first half
of 2013, higher than the average unemployment rate in Singapore of
around 2%.

While no longer speaking of targets, Heng told Parliament in March only
that Singapore welcomed foreign students and that it was good for local
students to mix with foreign peers.

Fewer places

As part of Singapore’s desire to promote itself as an international hub
for education, a number of top overseas universities have been drawn to
its shores in the past decade. Almost a dozen foreign branch campuses
have been established along with a large number of joint degree
partnerships with international institutions.

For example, some 23 Australian institutions are offering courses in
Singapore – the largest number offered by foreign universities. Around a
third of the intake is comprised of foreign students.

Bringing in foreign students was one of the stated aims of Singapore’s
Global Schoolhouse initiative that started in 2002 and included start-up
loans and subsidies to foreign institutions to set up branch campuses.

But a tightening of regulations on foreign institutions has led to a number of international institutions shutting down,
while others have abandoned Singapore, finding their operations
unviable once Singaporean subsidies ended. Local Singaporean students
also found the fees too high compared with local universities and
overseas students failed to arrive in the numbers hoped for.

The University of New South Wales closed its Singapore branch in 2007
after just one semester after it attracted far fewer students than
predicted. In July this year, the University of Chicago Booth School of
Business announced it was pulling out of Singapore in favour of Hong
Kong.

In November last year, Tisch Asia, New York University’s arts school,
shut its Singapore branch, reportedly because of huge deficits due to
high running costs, while a joint law course with NYU failed to attract enough students, even after offering scholarships.

Against these mini-disasters, the long-planned Yale-NUS, a liberal arts college, opened its doors last year
and a new joint medical school with Imperial College London has come on
stream, both charging high fees to international students.

With the cost of university education rising faster than inflation and
increasing sums taken out in loans, more and more students are
defaulting on their loan repayments. For some, this means being barred
from leaving the country.

In fact, almost 85,000 recipients of student loans from the government’s
low-interest National Higher Education Fund Corporation have to date
been stopped because of loan arrears. They join criminals, tax dodgers
and pension fund defaulters in facing departure bans.

Rising costs affect even students from middle-income families who are
now graduating with a large debt after a three-year undergraduate degree
that costs more than RM60,000 (US$18,000).
The outlay is much higher at a private university or a foreign branch
campus. In a public university, a medical degree can cost as much as
RM300,000 (US$92,000) whereas private colleges charge three times that
much.

Generally, private sector costs have increased by 20% to 25% in the past
five years where there are now more than 100 colleges and foreign
branch campuses. HSBC Bank estimates the total annual cost of an
undergraduate degree, including living expenses, at around US$13,000.

Earlier this year, Yemen’s higher education and scientific research
ministry said it would end new government scholarships for its students
to enrol in private Malaysian universities because of “poor educational
quality and high costs”. Some 9,000 Yemeni students are enrolled in
Malaysia, 4,000 of them in private universities.

Although the Yemeni case is unusual, the decision attracted wide
publicity and dented the government’s attempts to portray Malaysia as a
low-cost alternative to universities in the West and in Singapore.

Loans

While students are able to get low-interest government loans – loans for
private university courses are about a third of all government-backed
loans – these do not cover the whole cost at private institutions. Yet
more and more students are enrolling in the private sector because of a
lack of places in the top public universities.

Overall cost of living rises are also putting financial pressure on
families. The Keadilan Youth or KeADILan, the youth wing of the National
Justice Party of Malaysia or PKR, said that with low starting salaries,
Malaysian graduates “cannot make ends meet”.

“Many local graduates have the added burden of repaying their PTPTN
[National Higher Education Fund Corporation] education loans and this
can cost up to RM300 a month," the group said in a statement.

PTPTN chief executive officer Agos Cholan said the corporation had to
resort to barring the defaulters from leaving Malaysia because they had
ignored repeated reminders to repay their loans. To have the ban lifted,
Agos said defaulters would need to make some payments immediately,
depending on their income, and would need to sign papers committing them
to pay monthly sums.

Rapidly shrinking fund

Although the number facing bans is unacceptably high, it is down from
some 130,000 in 2007 after the government converted some loans to grants
for top performing students. More than 14,000 blacklisted PTPTN
borrowers paid back their loans in 2013 compared with some 10,000 the
year before.

In a statement, PTPTN said as many as 500,000 borrowers had defaulted on
their loans since the fund was established in 1997. While not all have
been barred, it means the amount of money in the fund is rapidly
shrinking and affecting the PTPTN’s ability to lend to new students.

Fund chairman Shamsul Anuar Nasarah said the corporation was finding it
too difficult to finance new students because of the high number of
defaulters and with RM1.2 billion (US$367 million) in unpaid loans
outstanding.

The 2015 budget announced this month gives PTPTN borrowers an incentive
to make lump sum payments by March next year when they will receive a
20% discount on their loans. Those who pay consis¬tently for 12 months
until the end of 2015 will be offered a 10% discount.

But student groups criticised the government for being more concerned
about propping up the loan corporation than easing the fees burden on
students with more scholarships.

Their criticisms of the government came after Malaysia’s second
Education Minister Idris Jusoh said PTPTN loan defaulters stretching
back to 1998 could be blacklisted on a bank database used to sanction
new loan applications. This would have an effect similar to being
declared bankrupt and could affect graduates’ ability to buy a house,
for example.

PTPTN has disbursed RM5.3 billion (US$1.62 billion) to more than 990,000 students since 1998.

At the tertiary level, public expenditure per student in both public and
private institutions averaged US$9,221 in OECD countries in 2012, the Education at a Glance
report says. But the amount varied from about US$2,000 in Chile to more
than US$17,000 in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden – the four
countries where the share of private spending is small or negligible.

In all countries with available data, except Hungary and Latvia, public
expenditure per student is greater for public than private institutions.
But patterns in the allocation of public funds to public and private
institutions differ, the OECD analysts say.

In Denmark and the Netherlands, at least 90% of students are enrolled in
public universities and most public money goes to these institutions.
In the two countries, private funds complement public spending to
varying degrees although private expenditure is less than 6% of total
spending on public and private institutions in Denmark but above 28% in
the Netherlands.

In Belgium, Estonia, Hungary, Iceland and Sweden, public expenditure
goes to both public and private institutions. Government allocations per
student in some private institutions is at least 58% and more than 100%
of the level of public spending per student in public universities.

However, these countries also have different participation patterns. In
Hungary, Iceland and Sweden, at least 80% of students are enrolled in
public universities, whereas in Belgium and Estonia, they are mainly in
government-dependent private institutions. In all three first-mentioned
nations, the share of expenditure on private tertiary institutions is
below the OECD average, while in the remaining two countries, taxpayers’
money goes mainly to private universities.

Public expenditure on tertiary education amounts to nearly one-quarter
of total public education spending on average across OECD countries. But
in the OECD and partner countries, the percentages range from less than
16% in Korea, to 32% in Finland, 36% in Canada and 38% in Turkey.

Grants and loans to students

OECD research indicates that a robust financial support system is
important for ensuring good outcomes for higher education students, and
that the type of aid is also critical, the report says. A key question
in many OECD countries is whether financial support for students should
be provided primarily in the form of grants or loans. Advocates of
student loans argue that these allow available resources to be spread
further.

If the amount spent on grants were used to guarantee or subsidise loans
instead, aid would be available to more students, and overall access to
higher education would increase. Loans also shift some of the cost of
education on to those who benefit most from higher education, namely the
individual student, and reflect the high private returns of completing
tertiary education.

Opponents argue that student loans are less effective than grants in
encouraging low-income students to pursue further education. They also
argue that loans may be less efficient than anticipated because of the
various types of support provided to borrowers or lenders and the costs
of administration and servicing.

Finally, the report notes that a high level of student debt may have
adverse effects both for students and for governments if large numbers
of students are unable to repay their loans.

Allocations to higher education

OECD countries spend an average of about 22% of their public budgets for
tertiary education on support for students “and private entities”. In
Australia, Chile, Denmark, Iceland, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand,
Norway, the UK and the US, government support for students accounts for
more than 25% of public spending on tertiary education.

Only Argentina, the Czech Republic and Indonesia spend less than 7% of
total public spending on the tertiary sector in supporting their
students. In the Czech Republic, subsidies for students’ grants are sent
directly to institutions which are responsible for distributing them
among students.

A dozen of the 36 countries for which data are available rely
exclusively on scholarships, grants and transfer payments to private
institutions. Iceland provides only student loans while other countries
make a combination of grants and loans available. Both types of support
are used extensively in Australia, Chile, the Netherlands, New Zealand,
Norway, Sweden, the UK and the US.

In general, the countries that offer student loans are also those in
which public support for students comprises the largest proportion of
all public spending on tertiary education. In most cases, these
countries also spend an above-average proportion of their tertiary
education budgets on grants and scholarships, the report says.

Monday, 20 October 2014

Myanmar students are planning an
emergency meeting to deal with concerns over the draft higher education
law. Here students protest at Dagon University on September 2 against
the proposed law. Photo: Nyain Thit Nyi/Mizzima

(MANDALAY) – The All Burma Federation of
Student Unions (ABFSU) is planning to hold an all-Myanmar students’
emergency meeting in November, said ABFSU central working committee and
research committee official Aung Hmine San.

“The ABFSU, in cooperation with other organizations, needs to oppose
the national education law,” Aung Hmine San said. “We think other
students organizations also need to collectively oppose it. That’s why
we plan to organize the students emergency meeting so that ABFSU, the
University Students Union and other students organizations will be able
to work together to make plans.”

Students and civic groups say the proposed law allows centralized
control of universities and curtails efforts to bring about autonomy of
the country’s institutions of higher learning.

An organizing
committee was set up on October 4 to arrange the students’ emergency
meeting. The committee comprises of 10 members of the ABFSU and 10
members of the University Students Union.

Students and education experts will discuss the national education
law on the first day of the two-day meeting. On the second day, the
students propose making plans as to how to proceed.

The time, date and venue for the students’ emergency meeting have not yet been announced.

China's top education authorities have approved new regulations for
nine top universities, which seek to increase the schools' autonomy,
while observers have expressed concern about their effectiveness.
The nine universities include the country's top two universities,
Peking University and Tsinghua University, the Ministry of Education
announced on its website on Wednesday, adding that the newly established
regulations will help the systematic reform of higher education and aid
academic development.

Since 2013, a total of 32 universities have already seen their new
regulations, which were drafted by the universities themselves, approved
by the authorities.

All other Chinese universities are scheduled to establish their own
regulations by the end of next year, according to the ministry.

To run a university according to its own regulations is the
foundation of academic independence, Professor Xiong Bingqi, an expert
in higher education at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, told the Global
Times.

With these new regulations, the universities' management is supposed
to operate with a higher-level of academic autonomy than previously, he
added.
Peking University's new regulations indicate that more power over school management should be delegated to students.

The university set up a supervision committee for the first time to
deal with disciplinary violations by students and school staff. The
committee consists of students, teaching staff, members of non-Communist
parties and the university's disciplinary watchdog.

Under its new rules, Peking University students also have the chance
to become members of the school's academic board, allowing them to
supervise the election of academic staff and investigate academic
corruption, along with professors and delegates appointed by the
university president. The number of delegates appointed by the president
cannot surpass 15 percent of the board members.

No details have yet been revealed regarding any selection standards
or what proportion of the board will be made up of student delegates.

Although the university is encouraging students to join these new
bodies, students seem to be less enthusiastic, judging by the responses
of students reached by the Global Times.

"We know very little about how those student delegates will be
selected and who will select them. Even if we can participate in
discussions about university affairs, the administrative staff will
still be in charge of making any decisions," a history postgraduate
student studying at Peking University, surnamed Huang, told the Global
Times.

Tsinghua University has also emphasized its autonomy as it highlights the importance of budget independence.

Xiong expressed pessimism about the enforcement of these regulations
as these universities' officials are still appointed by the government
and universities are still entirely government-funded.

If Germany has done it, why can’t we? That’s the question
being asked by many students around the world in countries that charge
tuition fees to university. From this semester, all higher education
will be free for both Germans and international students at universities
across the country, after Lower Saxony became the final state to abolish tuition fees.

It’s important to be aware of two things when it comes to
understanding how German higher education is funded and how the country
got to this point. First, Germany is a federal country with 16
autonomous states responsible for education, higher education and
cultural affairs. Second, the German higher education system –
consisting of 379 higher education institutions with about 2.4m students
– is a public system which is publicly funded. There are a number of
small private institutions but they enrol less than 5% of the total
student body.

Back and forth with fees

Until 1970-71, West-German higher education students had to pay
tuition fees at the level of about 120 to 150 German Marks per semester.
There were needs-based exceptions but basically these fees had to be
paid by every student.

When they came to power in the late 1960s, Germany’s Social Democrats
supported higher education expansion by promoting widening
participation and equal opportunities and by increasing the number of
higher education institutions. From 1971 onwards, a system of state
financial assistance for students was established and tuition fees were
abolished. The assistance came first as a grant, later as a mix of half
repayable-loan and half grant.

During the peak period of higher education expansion in the late
1960s, exclusive funding of higher education by the states became too
much of a burden. New provisions were introduced for a framework law
laying down the general principles governing higher education across
West Germany. The first law, introduced in 1976, included a prohibition
of tuition fees.

Despite a flirtation with the idea of re-introducing tuition fees
under the conservative-liberal coalition government in the 1980s, a
stalemate ensued over whether tuition fees would lead state governments
to reduce their regular funding to universities.

Fees win out in late 1990s

The fall of the Berlin Wall and German Unification put all reform
plans on hold for several years until the whole East German system of
higher education institutions and academies had been evaluated and
reformed. A new discussion about tuition fees then started around the
mid-1990s, with their re-introduction seen as a solution to a number of
existing problems in the higher education system.

Around the end of the 1990s, the dam of resistance broke by allowing
the introduction of fees for so-called long-term students: students who
had been enrolled several semesters past the regular duration of their
study programme and had not finished.

Those states with a conservative government filed a law suit in 2002
against the framework law of higher education, arguing that its
prohibition of tuition fees was an illegitimate intervention into the
legal authority for educational matters of the states. The Federal
Constitutional Court upheld the complaint in 2005; immediately, seven states introduced tuition fees.

In 2006, the framework law was abolished under wider reforms of
German federalism. Tuition fees were capped at 500 Euros per semester,
but Berlin and all East-German states refused to introduce them.

Excellence and crisis

Yet the same reform of federalism led the states to reclaim complete
authority and responsibility for their higher education. This led the
Federal Ministry for Education and Research to refuse any further
co-funding with states on higher education. And it left the federal
ministry with a lot of spare money. A large part of this was eventually
invested into the German Excellence Initiative, a competitive funding programme launched in 2005 to support a group of universities to become global players.

But this also meant that the poorer states faced a funding crisis for
their higher education institutions. The problem was aggravated by the
fact the a number of the poorer states were located in East Germany,
where all states had decided not to introduce tuition fees in the hopes
to attract more students.

Gradual abolition

In successive years, as soon as state government elections have
elected social democratic or green party governments, tuition fees have
been abolished. The state of Hesse, for example, had tuition fees for
only a single year. In the end only two states were left with tuition
fees: Bavaria and Lower Saxony. The conservative government of Bavaria gave into
the mainstream and abolished tuition fees in the winter semester
2013-14, with Lower Saxony abolishing fees in the winter semester
2014-15.

But the heads of higher education institutions negotiated with their
ministries, arguing that they could not properly do their job of
offering high-quality student experience if the loss of income from
tuition fees was not compensated one way or another.

So most states have agreed to compensate their higher education
institutions with extra money – not quite covering the loss in fees
though – which was to be invested exclusively into the improvement of
the quality of studies and teaching. Most ministries decreed that
students had to be involved in decisions about how and for what purposes
the money was going to be spent.

How funding works now

The present situation is that all higher education institutions
receive a budget from the responsible ministry of the state in which
they are located, based on annual or biennial negotiations. This basic
budget is complemented by additional agreements between higher education
institutions and the state concerning the intake of additional numbers
of students and the money to compensate the loss of income from tuition
fees.

There are additional funding programmes – some funded jointly by the
states and the federal ministry – for supporting and promoting research,
in the competition for excellence.

Of course, most higher education institutions continue to feel
underfunded. The pressure on academic staff to attract external research
funding has increased, as has competition for such grants. Still,
compared to other countries in Europe, German higher education
institutions continue to be rather generously funded by their states –
an estimated 80% of their overall budgetary needs. There are also ample
opportunities and considerable amounts of external research funding
available.

Publicly funded, but for how long?

Despite the fact that competition for funding and accountability has
increased in German higher education, there is still a general consensus
that it is a public system and should be state-funded. The abolition of
tuition fees, even by conservative state governments, reflects this
consensus too. In fact, the new Federal Minister for Education and
Research, a member of the Conservative Party, recently announced a major increase in the levels of needs-based state financial assistance to students that will start in the 2016-17 academic year.

But funding varies considerably depending on different institutional
and regional factors. The winners of the German Excellence Initiative
have received and are receiving considerable amounts of additional
funding in the hope that more German universities will be able to
achieve better positions on world university rankings. There were 12
German universities in the 2014-15 Times Higher Education World University Rankings, up from 10 the year before.

Higher education institutions in the poorer states (most of them in
the east of Germany) receive less money and academic staff are being
paid lower salaries while higher education institutions in the richer
states (typically in the south) are better funded.

The debate about tuition fees – though dead for the moment – can
easily be revived in the future. It has not been dropped from the agenda
once and for all. Government policies continue to be in favour of
tuition fees, most representatives of institutional leadership are as
well, though for different reasons. But there is currently a lack of
general public support. Once this has changed – and influential advisory bodies and think tanks are working towards such a change – the idea of tuition fees will be introduced again.

An academic’s reputation plays a key role in generating increases in a
scientific paper’s citation count early in its citation life cycle,
before a tipping point, after which his or her reputation has much less
influence relative to the paper’s citation count. This is the intriguing
finding from a study by a team of collaborating social science analysts
in Belgium, Finland, Italy and the US.

Using data compiled by Thomson Reuters Web of Science, the team studied
450 highly cited scientists, nearly 84,000 articles in scientific
publication, and 7.6 million citations tracked over the equivalent of
387,000 publication years!

In a paper published in the US journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
the team describe how they analysed, for each central scientist, his or
her production as measured by the number of publications in a year, the
cumulative number of citations received by publications, and a
quantitative reputation measure defined as the net citations aggregated
across all publications.

Combining several empirical features of the analysis, the researchers
then investigated the role of the reputation effect, showing that author
reputation accounted for a significant increase in the number of
citations an academic could attract.

“Over a scientist’s career, a reputation is developed, a standing within
a research community, based largely on the quantity and quality of his
or her publications. Here, we develop a framework for quantifying the
influence author reputation has on a publication’s future impact,” they
write.

“We find author reputation plays a key role in driving a paper’s
citation count early in its citation life cycle, before a tipping point,
after which reputation has much less influence relative to the paper’s
citation count. In science, perceived quality, and decisions made based
on those perceptions, is increasingly linked to citation counts.
Shedding light on the complex mechanisms driving these quantitative
measures facilitates not only better evaluation of scientific outputs
but also a more transparent evaluation of the scientists producing
them.”

The researchers say that scientific reputation has emerged as a key
“signalling mechanism” to address the dilemma of excessive information
that arises in tasks such as evaluating, comparing, and ranking
publication profiles in academic competitions. As well, a scientist’s
reputation plays an important role as a signal of trustworthiness and
quality, “a role that addresses directly the ‘agency problem’
characterising the reward system in science”.

“With little time to read every paper on a given topic, this
trustworthiness signal is anecdotally consistent with the common
practice of perusing the author names when preliminarily evaluating the
relevance of a newly found publication,” the team says.

“In the past, an author’s identity and associated reputation was mainly
linked to reference lists and personal interactions. Nowadays, an
author’s reputation is becoming increasingly visible through searchable
publication databases, laboratory websites, press, and other media, in
addition to citations.”

In their introduction to the paper, the researchers say that citation
counts are widely used to judge the impact of both scientists and their
publications. Although many factors outside the pure merit of the
research or the authors influence such counts, few investigations have
been made into identifying and quantifying the role of author-specific
factors.

They note it is also likely that institutional affiliation and journal
reputation play a role in the citation dynamics. But they suggest that
disentangling the interaction between the multiple reputation sources
will likely be challenging and remains an open avenue for investigation.

Nevertheless, as measures are becoming increasingly common in evaluation
scenarios throughout science, the researchers say it is crucial to
better understand what the citation measures actually represent in the
context of scientists’ careers.

“Moreover, how does reputation affect a scientist’s access to key
resources, the incentives to publish quality over quantity, and other
key decisions along the career path?” they say. “In addition, what role
does reputation play in the mentor-matching process within academic
institutions, in the effectiveness of single/double blinding in peer
review, and in the reward system of science?”

They note that it is also important to consider the role of reputation
in light of the increasing orientation of science around team endeavours
with “multiple levels of hierarchy and division of labour”. But,
because it is difficult to evaluate and assign credit to individual
contributors, they say there may be an increase in the role and strength
of the reputation in overcoming the problem associated with asymmetric
and incomplete information.

“In addition to the collaboration network, reputation also plays a key
role in numerous other scientific inputs such as money, labour,
knowledge, and so on, that inevitably affect the overall quantity and
quality of scientific outputs.”

Young scientists lacking a reputation can be negatively affected by the
social stratification in science, the researchers say, adding that the
“appealing competitive advantage gained by working with a prestigious
mentor may be countered by the possibility that it may not be the ideal
mentor-advisee match”.

Nevertheless, they say that their results have broad implications across
the scientific community, given the numerous careers that interact with
top scientists via collaboration or mentorship.

Bachelor-degree graduates from Australia’s prestigious Group of Eight,
or Go8, and technology universities earn a greater amount over their
lifetimes than those from the lesser known and regional universities,
according to a new analysis that found their total income was 6% more
over a 40-year career.

For graduates with degrees in science or commerce, this equated to about
A$200,000 (US$175,000) more over their career. The data showed that
bachelor degree holders from top universities actually earned about 10%
more over their lifetime, but this dropped four percentage points when
social advantages were accounted for.

Go8 universities were more likely to enrol students with better previous
school grades, students from private schools, and students with parents
who had degrees and high profile jobs, says a report by an independent think tank, the Grattan Institute.

This means some of the difference could have been attributed to the fact
that Go8 and technology universities enrol students who would have
performed better anyway, rather than it being the effect of the
university itself, the report states.

A much larger discrepancy was found in chosen course of study, with a
law graduate earning A$300,000 (US$262,000) more than a science graduate
over their career, and a science graduate earning up to A$1 million
(US$875,000) more than a creative arts graduate.

“The report shows that when it comes to earnings, what you study matters
more than where you study,” Grattan Institute researcher Andrew Norton
said. “Studying engineering at any university is likely to lead to a
higher salary than studying arts at a sandstone university."

Vice-chancellor of the regional Southern Cross University, Peter Lee,
said he rejected any proposition that the quality of the education
experience at a regional university was less than that at a city
university, leading to lower salary outcomes.

Lee said there were many other factors, such as gender balance and
salary differences between cities and regions, which could have
explained the difference. For instance, Southern Cross University was
made up of 73% female students, and females consistently earned less
than males even when allowing for career gaps while family-raising.

Lee also said there are large salary differences between the city and
the regions, attributing to some of the difference: “A lawyer in a big
city law firm does earn more than a lawyer practising in a smaller firm
in the regions.”

A higher education analyst at the University of Melbourne, Dr Geoff
Sharrock, said the report’s most important finding where earnings are
concerned, was that a student’s field of study was far more important
than the university itself.

“Some fields pay much better than others, regardless of which university
conferred the degree,” Sharrock said. “This suggests that students
should choose their field of interest and ability first, and their
institution second. In doing so, they may also factor in price
differences and how much debt risk they are prepared to take on.”

In a comment on the report, Rosemary Stanton, a visiting fellow at the
University of New South Wales, asked why was there an assumption that
“earning a little more over a lifetime was a good thing?”

“It may mean that these people work longer hours and thus spend less
time with their families, possibly impoverishing them in ways that have
nothing to do with money,” Stanton said.

*Alexandra Hansen is an editor with The Conversation wherethis article was published.

Sunday, 7 September 2014

The Ministry of Education yesterday designated 19 universities and
colleges in the lowest 15 percent in terms of their operations,
restricting government financial support starting next year.

In
an assessment of the nation’s 334 universities and colleges, the
education authority singled out the schools in the poorest condition and
suggested a restructuring via a reduction in their admissions quotas.

The
ministry has sought to reduce university entrance quotas after it was
discovered that XXX that there were too many universities in Korea based
on the country’s number of college students and that many of them were
operated irresponsibly.

Earlier this year, the government also
began to invest 1.2 trillion won ($1.1 billion) in making universities
more specialized in order to reduce the number of freshmen.

The
assessment, which looks at nine criteria, including alumni employment
rates and the number of students who received scholarships, encouraged
schools to shrink admissions quotas by providing extra points.

“By
suggesting a quota reduction in exchange for additional points, some
universities and colleges … reduced their quotas by a total of 4,244 for
next year,” a ministry official said.

One college went so far as to cut its entrance rate by 28 percent for next year to escape falling into the lowest 15 percent.

The
ministry initially selected 35 universities in the lowest group and
notified school officials on Aug. 22, explaining they could move out of
the bottom tier if they shrank their admissions for next year by a
certain extent.

Sixteen gave up admitting a total of 2,801 new
students next year. The 19 remaining schools announced by the ministry
yesterday rejected the suggestion to shrink their quotas.

Cheongju
University, for instance, said it opted to forego some financial
support from the government and maintain its entrance quota because a
decrease in the number of its incoming freshmen would worsen its
financial situation.

Those schools are excluded from being able
to bid for government-run projects for financial support from next year.
They will also be prohibited from increasing their admissions in
certain departments. Additionally, new students at those institutions
will be barred from receiving specific government scholarships based on
their schools’ performance.

Seven out of the 19 universities and
colleges in the bottom 15 percent in the poorest condition were dealt
even harsher financial penalties.

Freshmen at those seven
schools will be restricted from receiving government scholarships, and
some will not be eligible for student loans in full.